Behind this utterance, one can hear what is truly the locus classicus, the classic
statement, of how one is impelled by exile to provide sympathetic assistance to other
exiles, that of Dido before the shipwrecked Aeneas: "Non ignari mali, miseris succerere
disco—Not ignorant of evils myself, I learn to succor the miserable" (Aeneid, I.630).
Without question Mary Shelley's educated readers would have heard the resonance of
this Latin tag, an allusion few women novelists of this time would have had sufficient
classical training to make.